expedition

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A journey undertaken by a group of people with a definite objective: an expedition against the enemy stronghold; a scientific expedition to the South Pole.

n. The group undertaking such a journey.

n. Speed in performance; promptness. See Synonyms at haste.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The quality of being expedite; efficient promptness; haste; dispatch; speed; quickness; as to carry the mail with expedition.

n. A sending forth or setting forth the execution of some object of consequence; progress.

n. An important enterprise, implying a change of place; especially, a warlike enterprise; a march or a voyage with martial intentions; an excursion by a body of persons for a valuable end; as, a military, naval, exploring, or scientific expedition.

n. The body of persons making such excursion.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The quality of being expedite; efficient promptness; haste; dispatch; speed; quickness; as to carry the mail with expedition.

n. A sending forth or setting forth the execution of some object of consequence; progress.

n. An important enterprise, implying a change of place; especially, a warlike enterprise; a march or a voyage with martial intentions; an excursion by a body of persons for a valuable end; as, a military, naval, exploring, or scientific expedition; also, the body of persons making such excursion.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. The state of being freed from impediments; hence, expeditiousness; promptness; haste; speed; quickness; despatch.

n. The state of being expedited or put in motion; progress; march.

n. An excursion, journey, or voyage made by a company or body of persons for a specific purpose; also, such a body and its whole outfit: as, the expedition of Xerxes into Greece; Wilkes's exploring expedition; a trading expedition to the African coast.

There was a lack of detail in many areas, such as, if the expedition is well into Amazonia, and are totally spent and half-dead from starvation and disease, how did they get out in order that they undertake the next expedition?

But it was primarily a Magellan-meets-Darwin expedition in which Venter and his crew sifted the sea for enough biological material to map the genome of, well, the entire planet Earth, collecting millions of microbes on filter paper and shipping them back to Rockville, Maryland, for analysis.